Talk:Wiki Style Guide/@comment-25565811-20161111135019
Recently, I noticed, that there is a problem with outdated information: * As the Mod is still in development, Mevans changes some stuff, like the look of items and structures, spawning locations, terrain generation, crafting recipes, ... * Information is provided more than once on the wiki. * Only some occurences of them were changed, others not. This leads to contradicting info on different pages. Examples: Outdated textures: The textures of some alignment shields were changed in . Someone uploaded the new textures under new filenames and changed them on the shield page, but not on the factions page. So the factions page still showed the old picture. The fix is easy for that, but took quite a while: * Re-upload new versions of a picture under the old filename, to make sure, that everywhere is displayed the new version. Put the reason into the text box (updated to Public Beta 29 in this case). * If you need an old picture for some reason (e.g. this is how the shield looked in the good old days), upload it again under another name. * If you have to change a filename (e.g. all names for similar purposes should follow the same system, not NewShieldDwarf22.png and Galadhrim_Shield.png), make sure to check where it's used and change . * Try to find existing images before uploading new ones. For this, it helps others a lot to put the description of the picture into the text box. You won't find NewShieldDwarf22.png, unless the description holds keywords like shield, dwarf, dwarven, dwarves, durin's folk, update 22, etc. Outdated texts: Sometimes, structures or their contents get changed. So, in , a lot vessels were added, before it was only mugs. Also different containers are now used to store loot. All text, that mentiones mugs or chests is now inaccurate and needs to be adapted to the new situation. How to fix this: * Avoid duplicate information. E.g. if you put on the biome page in the structure section something like this: "The tower holds food and other useful loot." rather than "The tower holds a mug of mead, 2 chests with gold, silver and angmar weapons." this descripion probably will be still accurate after an update. * If readers want to know exactly, what's in the tower, they can follow the link. The exact loot should be provided on the tower's page and only there. * If something changes, you can just edit one page and be good. Outdated crafting recipes: Sometimes (rarely) even crafting recipes change. E.g. (just assuming) Torog Stew is made of bones, rotten flesh, dirt and a bowl. * We don't need the recipe on all of these pages, just links to it. * If the recipe changes, let's say swan feathers instead of bones, we change the recipe on one page (instead of five) and remove the link from the bone page. * Exceptions: Crafting recipes for items (e.g. armour) should be on the item page and on the respective crafting table, but nowhere else (e.g. crafting material for that armour). General rule: To avoid all the problems above, we should try, to keep all special info to the detail pages and use more general descriptions and links on the overview pages. No double information, if possible. This helps to keep pages slim and readable, and consistent to each other. I tried to work all this in a short form into the wiki guide. It saves a lot of unnecessary work, if everybody has this in mind. I hope, the rest of the staff agrees.